Originally Posted by
Hayden
Also, you may or may not know this but at that elevation and +2800#, you will need an upgraded prop. Do you know what you have now? I'm at 3200 ft elevation and we would not be able to surf at that weight without our prop upgrade.
A final point of advice I would give; if this is your first time adding that much weight, because our hull has so little freeboard, you need your drivers to know/learn how to do the power-skid-turn when they pickup their riders. I still have intermediate drivers that struggle with it. I found a video on it when I first started looking into heavy weight but can't find it now. When the surfer falls out of the wave and you need to do pickup, it breaks down into 3 steps:
1.) Cut throttle to 1/3 (2seconds to do this). Lets the boat settle somewhat.
2.) Start a hard turn to startboard (1-2seconds to do this) If goofy riders you would go port.
3.) Cut throttle completely and wait 8-10seconds for stern of boat to "skid" around 180 degrees.
We've found that not doing this, especially on busy lake, but even when we're solo, will eventually get you water over the bow because you're so heavy loaded and have next to no freeboard. By doing it, you keep the boat almost perfectly inline with the wake you've been creating behind you upto that point and won't get any random waves coming across the bow from doing a circular pickup.